TheCable

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) says it is developing a payment plan to recover N22 billion debt owed by airline operators to regulatory agencies.

Musa Nuhu, NCAA director-general, disclosed this on Wednesday when he hosted a delegation of the house of representatives committee on aviation led by Nnolim Nnaji.

“Under your guidance, we have carried on that agreement that we had. We had a meeting with the operators on the issue of the debt collection and agreed to notify each airline on the level of debt that they have,” he said.

“We will sit down with them and do the reconciliation. We will then implement a payment plan. We do not expect everyone to pay all their money at a go because of the difficulties in the industry and economic downturn.”

According  to Nuhu, the decision would eventually favour all parties involved.

Nnaji, chairman of the committee, commended the authority for being on top of its game despite the impact of coronavirus outbreak on the aviation industry.

In November, Hadi Sirika, minister of aviation, had said local airlines incurred a debt of N22 billion within a period of 10 years.

This includes N19.37 billion and $6,993,284 million (N2.7 billion), which includes unremitted ticket sales charge (TSC), and cargo sales charge (CSC) collected on behalf of the NCAA and its sister agencies.